New Books in Islamic Studies

• Basit Kareem Iqbal, "The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution" (Fordham UP, 2025)

  Basit Kareem Iqbal's new book The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution (Fordham UP, 2025) uses ethnographic scenes from Jordan and Canada to contextualize the role of Muslim charities and community organizations that support displaced refugees from the Syrian catastrophe. Through these encounters, however, we learn not only of the limitations of secular humanitarian projects, but we are also privy to the deep theological enterprise of notions of trial and tribulation of those caught between mobility and immobility and various entangled temporalities. Iqbal and his interlocutors grapple with the asymmetrical realities of a Divine’s mercy and compassion set against violence, horror, and death. It is at these junctures that we encounter an ethnography of theology, that is, how Qur’anic principles are fundamentally tested, negotiated, and stretched by everyday survivors, be they activists or humanitarian aid workers, as they forge a path ahead in the world of the living. The interpretations that arise from Iqbal’s interlocutors, be they Salafi or Sufi oriented, challenges readers to contend with religious and theological sensibilities of a secular world of humanitarianism and international aid but also centers the voices of refugees. Iqbal’s book is beautifully crafted. It models how one can write of such topics with care and intention without ever escaping or sensationalizing the horrors and evils faced by displaced peoples. This book will be of interest to those who work on Syria, anthropology of Islam, Islamic theology, international aid and humanitarianism and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

  --------  

  1:16:50

  --------

  1:16:50
• Justin Marozzi, "Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World" (Pegasus Books, 2025)

  Slavery has been a ubiquitous practice throughout much of world history–and the Muslim world was no exception. Slave soldiers, concubines, and eunuchs can be found throughout Muslim writings—which, as Justin Marozzi points out in his book Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World (Pegasus Books, 2025), ends up giving us a selective and narrow view of who slaves were, and what they did. Justin tries to dive into this history–sometimes very patchy history–to figure out the full extent of slavery in the Muslim world, from the very start of Muslim society, through the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary Pirates, to abolition and the final decision by Mauritania to abolish slavery in 1981. Justin Marozzi is a former Financial Times and Economist foreign correspondent. He is also the author of several books, including Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood (Allen Lane: 2014) and Islamic Empires: The Cities that Shaped the Modern World (Pegasus Books: 2020). You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Captives and Companions. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

  --------  

  40:01

  --------

  40:01
• Nerina Rustomji, "The Beauty of the Houri: Heavenly Virgins and Feminine Ideals" (Oxford UP, 2021)

  In her scintillating new book, The Beauty of the Houri: Heavenly Virgins, Feminine Ideals (Oxford UP, 2021), Nerina Rustomji presents a fascinating and multilayered intellectual and cultural history of the category of the “Houri” and the multiple ideological projects in which it has been inserted over time and space. Nimbly moving between a vast range of discursive theaters including Western Islamophobic representations of the Houri in the post 9/11 context, early modern and modern French and English Literature, premodern Muslim intellectual traditions, and popular preachers on the internet, Rustomji shows the complexity of this category and its unavailability for a canonical definition. The Beauty of the Houri is intellectual history at its best that combines philological rigor with astute theoretical reflection. And all this Rustomji accomplishes in prose the delightfulness of which competes fiercely with its lucidity. SherAli Tareen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His book Defending Muhammad in Modernity (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020) received the American Institute of Pakistan Studies 2020 Book Prize and was selected as a finalist for the 2021 American Academy of Religion Book Award. His other academic publications are available here. He can be reached at [email protected]. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

  --------  

  49:28

  --------

  49:28
• 13.4 - Zumretay Arkin

  In this episode, Chella Ward and Claudia Radiven were in conversation with Zumretay Arkin, discussing the Uyghur genocide in East Turkestan. Zumretay is Chair of the Women’s Committee at the World Uyghur Congress (WUC). The WUC is an international organization acting as an umbrella organization representing and advocating for Uyghurs around the world whether in East Turkestan or the diaspora. In our conversations, we discussed the nature of colonial occupation, genocide, and how organisation and individuals can work to raise awareness and promote solidarity in situations of Islamophobic repression. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

  --------  

  1:01:13

  --------

  1:01:13
• Fahad Ahmad Bishara, "Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean History" (U California Press, 2025)

  Monsoon Voyagers follows the voyage of a single dhow (sailing vessel), the Crooked, along with its captain and crew, from Kuwait to port cities around the Persian Gulf and Western Indian Ocean, from 1924 to 1925. Through his account of the voyage, Fahad Ahmad Bishara unpacks a much broader history of circulation and exchange across the Arabian Sea in the time of empire. From their offices in India, Arabia, and East Africa, Gulf merchants utilized the technologies of colonial capitalism — banks, steamships, railroads, telegraphs, and more — to transform their own regional bazaar economy. In the process, they remade the Gulf itself. Drawing on the Crooked's first-person logbooks, along with letters, notes, and business accounts from a range of port cities, Monsoon Voyagers narrates the still-untold connected histories of the Gulf and Indian Ocean. The Gulf's past, it suggests, played out across the sea as much as it did the land. Monsoon Voyagers doesn’t just tell a vivid, imaginative narrative—it teaches. Each port-of-call chapter can work as a stand-alone module. And the brief “Inscription” interludes double as turn-key primary-source labs—perfect for document analysis, quick mapping, and mini-quant work with weights, measures, and credit instruments. It invites undergraduates into a connected oceanic world and the big questions of world history, while graduate students get a method—how to read vernacular archives across scales and languages to design their own transregional, archive-driven projects. A quick heads-up: Traditional local musical interludes (see below for credits and links) will punctuate our voyage as chapter markers you can use to pause and reflect—as we sail from Kuwait to the Shatt al-Arab, then out across the Gulf to Oman, Karachi, Gujarat, Bombay, and the Malabar coast. We’ll return via Muscat and Bahrain, dropping anchor once more in Kuwait. Music Credits and Links: Prologue: The Logbook1. KuwaitInscription: Debts2. The Shatt Al-ʿArabInscription: Freightage3. The GulfInscription: Passage4. The Sea of OmanInscription: Guides5. Karachi to KathiawarInscription: Letters6. BombayInscription: Transfers7. MalabarInscription: Conversions8. CrossingsInscription: Maps9. MuscatInscription: Poems10. BahrainInscription: Accounts11. ReturnsEpilogue: Triumph and Loss Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

  --------  

  1:49:59

  --------

  1:49:59

Altri podcast di Religione e spiritualità

Podcast di tendenza in Religione e spiritualità

Su New Books in Islamic Studies

New Books in Islamic Studies: Podcast correlati